It would be impossible to describe the conflict of emotions that pa.s.sed through Guy Elersley"s breast at this moment; the bitter indignation he had felt up to this for Vivian Standish was nothing when compared with the inveterate contempt and hatred that subst.i.tuted it at sight of this lovely wrecked flower, which he saw pining and withering in beautiful decline, far away from the world she could so easily have dazzled. It was with a dangerous light in his eyes, and a threatening vow in his heart, that Guy knocked this time at the broad hall door. His call was answered by an elderly woman of quiet, reserved appearance, who neither seemed surprised nor concerned by his visit. In as respectful and business-like a manner as possible, Guy asked for the lady directress of the inst.i.tution, and was immediately shown by this silent noiseless woman into an apartment at the right, where she left him to wait alone in his wonder for a few moments.
The room was scrupulously neat, and tolerably well-furnished, but there was a painful simplicity and provoking fitness and quaintness about the things he saw, that upset his nerves uncomfortably. Every element of furniture was so intensely appropriate, and consistent with all the surroundings; the silence was so settled and sacred, and the noiseless tread of the inmates, as they glided here and there through the pa.s.sages, almost irritated him. He was soon distracted from these trying observations, however, by the entrance of a dignified haughty-looking woman of about forty years; she was attired in the same simple costume which he had just admired on the young girl in the garden, except that her hair, sprinkled here and there with silver threads, was tucked neatly under an old-fashioned head-dress of muslin that strangely became her handsome face. Still standing a little inside the door-way, this cold, reserved woman looked enquiringly, and waited for Guy to speak his errand, whatever it might be.
"I have intruded here," Guy began with not too much confidence in his colloquial powers, "to enquire for a young girl named Josephine de Maistre, who, I am told was admitted here some time ago. I do not know the young lady personally," Guy frankly avowed, "nor have I ever spoken to her; but I have been entrusted with a very serious duty to discharge relative to her, and if it be not encroaching on your rules, I would be glad to interview the young lady."
An answer came in cold words, from an unmoved face:
"It is not our custom," the stately woman began, "to admit young male visitors to our home without urgent cause for so doing. Show me that you are justified in seeking a deviation from our custom, and I will grant it."
Guy fidgeted with his watch chain, and with a little hesitation which shewed how much he dreaded any indiscretion on his part, he asked,
"Are you acquainted with any details of Miss de Maistre"s life before her coming here?"
With the same placid face, his companion answered,
"I know everything--she has had no secret from me."
"Then I am safe in broaching the subject to you," Guy answered more freely, and accordingly, in as brief terms as possible, he confided his mission to this haughty woman, leaving her then to judge for herself whether the responsibility bequeathed him by dying lips justified or not his intrusion within this quiet home. When he had finished, the set brow of his listener relaxed a little, into an almost involuntary expression of interest.
"You may see her presently," said the stern lady, "I am glad you have come so soon. It was very hard to persuade her at first that G.o.d"s retribution would come time enough, she was so eager to avenge her wrongs with her own hand, but now that she has fully conquered her sinful desire for vengeance, G.o.d thinks fit to act. I will send her to you directly," and with these words she swept noiselessly out through the shadowy doorway, leaving Guy tangled up in the strangest sensations.
There was a moment of suspense before the dignified woman re-appeared, leading the beautiful heroine of his vision in the grounds into Guy"s presence. There was a melancholy beauty in that face, whose memory never after ceased to haunt his heart. Something so appealingly sorrowful, and yet so coldly sad, that one pitied and admired and loved in the one glance. The long, dark lashes that fringed the white lids, and rested languidly on the pallid cheeks, every now and then shaded the deepest, dreamiest and most mournful eyes Guy had ever seen, and the subdued pa.s.sion and smothered emotion that the keen glance might detect trembling on her full, red lips, was grander to Guy than anything else human he could conceive. Then the large, creeping waves of the dry, dark hair that encircled her intelligent brow, and nestled around her well-formed ears to her shapely neck behind, capped the climax of Guy"s rapturous admiration.
The childish simplicity with which she stood before him coupled so strangely with a mien of reserve and independence, put Guy greatly at a loss to know how he was to take this strange creature. There was no conceit, no vanity, no empty pride accompanying all that dazzling beauty. Guy allowed that at one time this face must have worn becomingly the expression of coquetry--may be there was once a pleasure in showing this face to its best advantage, with the a.s.sistance of studied apparel, but now! all that was a buried past. There was now a look of wild, natural beauty that had not been fettered by rules of fashion or style; no attempt at effect in the plain, simple costume that clung so becomingly to her _svelte_ figure. No artful use was made of those perfect features; she looked like a child-woman--so sweet, so innocent, so simple, and yet so grand, so sad, so serious.
Guy stretched forth his hand in a friendly way, as she entered, saying,
"We are strangers in one way, Mademoiselle de Maistre, but in a thousand ways we are very good friends, at least, such is my disposition towards you."
She placed her small, tender hand in his, and scanned his face a little doubtingly.
The majestic lady "directress" encircling the girl in her arms, said earnestly,
"I will leave you with this gentleman; trust him, my dear, he is your friend," and then she very considerately left the room.
Guy, on finding himself alone with the object of his search, entered into business immediately.
His voice was touchingly respectful and sympathetic as he addressed Fifine.
"I hope," he began, "that you will not object to my recalling certain events of your past life, mademoiselle. I have been commissioned to bear you a message, relative to a detail of your unusually sad experience, but I would first like to know that it does not pain you too much to hear your past repeated."
"Oh, sir!" she said, clasping her hands and looking devoutly up, "don"t spare me on that account. When we have been able to do wrong, we should be able to bear the consequences, whatever they be. Besides, my past has never been a past to me--all is as vivid to-day as it was in the first hours of my experience. I have only memory left me from that frightful past."
"Then we may as well proceed to the point immediately," added Guy, who was feeling slightly uncomfortable over the task.
"I am a doctor by profession, mademoiselle, and have, for the last few years, been practising in the city of New York. Some months ago I was summoned to the bed-side of a man in typhoid fever, in whom I recognized an old school friend. He was evidently delighted at the freak of good fortune that brought us together, for, as he told me, there was a secret gnawing at his heart, that he longed to disclose. I sat down beside him and heard, mademoiselle, from his fevered lips, the shameful account of a wedding ceremony, of which you were such an unfortunate victim."
Fifine was clutching her fingers convulsively, and there was a look of suppression in her sad face that touched Guy, he was, however, anxious to get through with his disagreeable tale, and hurried on.
"He bade me seek you out, mademoiselle, only to tell you that since that eventful night, he has wandered through life, dogged and shadowed by a cruel remorse, which ultimately laid him on the bed where I found him.
One thing he craved with his dying lips, mademoiselle, that the message be borne you from him, of your freedom; that you be told how that ceremony was a mockery, null and void, and after this disclosure, if pardon were possible, that you might try to forgive him his blind share in the disgraceful deed. The person I allude to, mademoiselle, was the pretended clergyman who married you that night." He looked now into the struggling face beside him, he knew the conflict that was raging in that soul. The trembling lips parted while he watched, and he heard the low murmur of a sanctified soul, as it breathed. "As we forgive them that trespa.s.s against us," she answered back the look of anxious enquiry he cast upon her face for a moment, and then cried:
"Do you say I am free? Not bound to anyone? Untrammelled all this time that I have lived in imaginary slavery, oh, how much I have suf--" but she checked the impulse that bade her murmur, and said instead, "because I have done wrong myself, I can forgive. _I_ know how the guilty heart craves for pardon, how the loaded conscience aches for relief, and therefore, you can take my entire forgiveness back to the penitent who asks it. After all," she continued, in a sort of soliloquy, "forgiveness _is_ easier than revenge."
"You are a n.o.ble little soul," said Guy, touched by the piety and fervor of this blighted little heart.
"Ah, sir! it is not that," Fifine said regretfully, "I might have been that, if I had lived contentedly among the comforts, where G.o.d had so generously placed me, and not sighed to adopt a world of sin and shame, rather than sacrifice it. I can never be that now. I have killed my poor loving father: I have blighted my life--there is only penance and atonement now to bid me hope," then pa.s.sing her hand wearily over her eyes, she exclaimed in a long sigh, "So strange, all this! I thought that ugly chapter was over and done with, for everyone but me. And this man that sent you, who is he?" queried she.
In words as brief and clear as possible, Guy told her the story of his night by Nicholas Bencroft"s bed-side, dwelling emphatically upon the pitiful effects that remorse and reverses had left, where innocence and prosperity had once been. The girl"s face clouded at intervals, as she listened to the strange, touching recital, and she felt a sympathy in the end, for this other poor victim, who, like herself, had been led into evil, blindfolded.
After a long, long interval, Guy rose to depart, not however, without having made every arrangement with Fifine that was necessary to render her justice, and give Vivian Standish his due. Even towards this latter, she would not now indulge feelings of her old hatred. She asked that he be dealt with as leniently as possible, "for, sir," she argued, "the wicked are wicked only because of their weakness. They are _so_ much weaker than the good; and just as the man of physical strength is merciful with one who is physically weak, so should the rule apply to moral strength, and let him who can brave temptation deal gently with the poor, weak sinner." And then they parted to the time, Fifine having agreed to seek permission to enable her to take any active steps that should be deemed necessary for the rendering of calm, quiet justice to Vivian Standish"s victims.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV.
When Peace and Mercy, banish"d from the plain, Sprung on the viewless winds to heaven again All, all forsook the friendless, guilty mind, But Hope the charmer, hunger"d still behind.
--_Campbell_.
The gold and amber leaves, turned their withered edges inward, and fell, in sear, crisp decay, from the half-naked trees. The flowers were all dead. The songs of the summer birds were entirely hushed, and thus stripped of all its rustic beauty, Ottawa stood, in mid-autumn, awaiting the pleasure of winter.
It was the season, which of all others, appealed most eloquently to Honor Edgeworth"s heart, to her, the season of "falling leaves" and "moaning winds," was nature"s most sympathetic response, gratifying, as it did, the melancholy tendency in her nature.
The dear, dead summer, had fled into that vast eternity. Little, trifling experiences, that at one time meant almost nothing, looked precious and eloquent, now that her eyes viewed them, with that backward glance, which one casts so sorrowfully on the things that are receding from them forever. Little words she had heard, little kindnesses she had felt, little songs she had sung, aye, and even little tears she had shed! all were wafted back for one delightful moment of sweet regret.
She stood by the window again, as she did a year ago, two and three years ago, as she would, likely, in years to come, sunk in a reverie, watching the leaves fall, as they fell a twelve-month since; the leaves were just the same, the sky seemed still unchanged, the wind chanted the same weird, lonely lamentation, only _she_ was different, something had come into her life in that interval of years, and had gone out of it again, leaving it so desolate, so aimless, so blank! She had had a good draught from the cup of life, since that other autumn evening, when she stood at this very window, moralising on the transient nature of all mortal things. She had drunk deeply enough to know, that for souls like hers, happiness, is scattered among briars and thorns; she was a wiser, a sadder, perhaps even a better girl, this autumn day, but she was not happier, oh no!
In a slow, solemn procession, the items of her years" experience, pa.s.sed before her eyes, between the dead leaves and the closed window pane, she saw a panorama of memory. She was looking back with a sorrowful gratification upon the work of a couple of twelve-months, sighing now and then, smiling now and then, but never very happy over the suggestive souvenirs.
Altogether, Honor Edgeworth, had nothing of the superficialities, which characterize the majority of Ottawa young ladies, who have the "splendid advantages," and "glorious times" that she enjoyed. One was easily convinced, on knowing her, that riches and light pleasures, such as delight the average society girl, could not const.i.tute her happiness, she shared these things out of a sense of duty, because it was customary for girls in her position to do so, but princ.i.p.ally because Mr. Rayne had expressed a wish to that effect. She had been, and not unknowingly, the subject of sublime envy for a whole season in Ottawa, and had created no little _furore_ in a succession of stylish watering-places during the summer spell, and yet, here she was, after all that, in the face of another winter of gaiety and excitement, with the same cold indifference in her heart, and the same reserve and dignity in her manner.
Henry Rayne, was fast declining in health. The exertions of an active life were beginning to tell seriously on him, his heart troubled him, and his head troubled him, and Honor"s future troubled him more than either. He continually worried and thought over the time, when he would not be nigh to protect her, or guide her: her welfare was about the only mental problem he tried to solve, as he sat through the long hours of the day wrapped up in a cushioned _fauteuil_.
Vivian Standish, still flickered around the flame awaiting his doom; there was hope for him, while Henry Rayne regarded him, in the favorable light he did. His past career, seemed to have become a blank to him now, he could not understand how retribution had not caught up to him in the race, and so dropped trying to: he did not fear Bencroft, for his share of the guilt was about equal, but the magnanimity, or idiocy, of the "little one" if she had survived, he thought to be very convenient; of course, if through his instrumentality, she had pa.s.sed into a fairer and a better land, why so much the better for all parties concerned. He had held himself on the "look out" for months after his vile commission, ready, for the first insinuation of his guilt, that went abroad, but now that the period had lengthened into years, and he had pretty nearly exhausted the wages of his deed, he felt a sort of protection, and blotted out all uncomfortable reminiscenses from his memory. He had laid himself out, now, to play another little game, but this game, in its _denouement_ had surprised him more than he expected.
Being a conceited fellow, he did not relish indifference, much less, marked coldness, nearly so well, as the p.r.o.nounced admiration, with which he was wont to be received, but with all his attractions and efforts, he could only extract the most rigid politeness from Honor Edgeworth. "Bad beginning," he thought, as he tugged his long moustaches, and smiled superciliously with his handsome lips and dreamy eyes. Vivian Standish, for so many years, by profession a deceiver, had at length, made a false step which compromised himself seriously, as quietly and neatly, and securely as he had ever entrapped any victim, he was now entrapping himself in his own very meshes. Very coldly and mechanically indeed, he had planned his courtship with Honor Edgeworth, a thing, in his intentions to be a pure calculating process, a speculation, and now unknown to himself, almost unfelt by himself, his low ambition had led him into a snare; he began to grow uncomfortable under the calm, steady gaze of this dignified girl, he measured his words, and restricted himself generally, which in itself, was the strangest possible thing for him to do. He began to feel, that to lose her now, would make something more than a pecuniary difference to him, he had transferred the object of his craving from her dowry to herself, and to feel that he really wanted something which in any way could add to his material comfort, was, in itself the most powerful stimulus, that Vivian Standish had ever known. The fact that he worked out his own gratification sustained him through many a discouragement; may be it will cause no one to wonder either, for when one has gone through fire and water for someone else, one"s heart clings almost involuntarily to him ever after, one"s interest never dies out where his welfare is at stake.
It had been thus, with Vivian Standish, but the object of his daring deeds had been his own other self; that never satisfied nature of humanity, which, continually cries for more, that unreasonable element of our existence, that is not content, when we have dipped our trembling hands in the sluggish, sullied waters of sin and shame, to gather the little bright deceptive flower they craved to hold, something that looks so tempting and precious on the dangerous water"s edge, but which when gathered becomes offensive, and is cast so recklessly aside. How many of us there are, that sit in moody silence, grieving and wondering over our own ingrat.i.tude to ourselves; peevishly grumbling at our moral poverty, scanning with pitying disgust the persistent weakness of our natures, sighing with a hopeless resignation over a miserable destiny of broken resolutions and vain attempts, and wondering when it will all end, and relieve our burdened souls.
Vivian Standish, had become a moral wreck, more by accident than by nature. Phrenologists would scarcely have defined his handsome features as indicative of wickedness in the soul, but the victim of a mistaken vocation, has always been known to carry his propensities to the very worst limit; ending generally when all hope is vain, and amendment an impossibility. Sometimes one does hear of the evil-doer being overtaken in his dark course by the voice of conscience; a warning whisper, from some spirit-like voice, has occasionally stayed the hand of the murderer, the self-destroyer, the robber, or the drunkard; but I fear, it is a more familiar thing, to every one of us, to know, that when a man has once determinedly begun his downward course, it is rarely, he stops at the precipice; if he has risked great things on one occasion, he will hazard greater dangers on many occasions, never waiting, never halting, to think or to regret until he reach the final hazard which is life itself, consequently death itself, and then the awful sequel which is hushed, or whispered in a trembling breath, like a horrible ghost story, the consequences of eternal darkness, and agony, and despair.
The winter set in at Ottawa, the cold north-east winds blew over the bare streets and through the naked trees for days and weeks, and then, the soft, white, noiseless snowflakes stole over the desolate city, making it suddenly as bright and lively and cheerful, as it had been dreary and melancholy before.
December, with snow and cold, and icicles and sleighbells, subst.i.tuted the lovely "fall," and turned the wearisome scenes of summer remnants, into the gay, sparkling picture of lively winter.
It was December, and Honor Edgeworth"s lover had not proposed yet. Henry Rayne had still serious misgivings relative to Honor"s real sentiments, which prevented him from encouraging Standish to take the final step.
All through the summer and autumn months, Honor and he had been thrown a great deal together, he had given up his occupations elsewhere, and was now permanently established at Ottawa; in the mornings, when Honor drove or walked up town, to do her shopping, she often met him, either lunching at the confectioners, or coming out of the Post Office, or standing aimlessly at the Russell House entrance: invariably, he joined her, carrying all her small parcels, if she walked, or helping her in and out of her tiny phaeton if she drove. Every eye, any way trained in matrimonial calculations had given its knowing wink, at these two, which translated from eye-language means, "they"re going it," or "that"s a match:" other girls who did their shopping all by themselves, sighed wearily at "some people"s luck," and turned their heads purposely aside, to admire some grand display of millinery, or jewellery, or whatever distraction was at hand.